After having looked at Corey's excellent HTML pages regarding the mirrored
DNS stuff, I am having to change, and add to, the mirrored DNS script quite 
a bit, in order to do what is required of it. This includes:

1) Having users enter URLs rather than domain names, so the domain name
   is now extracted from the URL. I'm now adding the URL to a database of 
   URLs, and the domain name to the mirrored DNS database.

2) Allowing multiple users to add URLs, which requires user registration
   and authentication (I have added user authentication, and I'm still
   implementing user registration, which is a bit tricky since it involves
   the users being OKed by an administrator).

Unfortunately this extra work has put me behind schedule a bit, however
note that both these things are just what is required for the LivingPage,
so the work I'm doing for mirrored DNS will also work for the LivingPage,
so I'm still hoping to have at least a preliminary version ready by next week.
In fact I am wondering if you want the additions to the LivingPage to 
automatically be included in the mirrored DNS?

I have also fixed the problem I had last time with multiple IP addresses
for a particular domain name (e.g. www.disney.com), and I'm working on a
script to tackle the other problem I mentioned last week, of doing a daily
update of the mirrored DNS database to check for possible changes.


I have some questions about mirrored DNS:

1) Is there supposed to be one mirrored DNS database that everyone uses and
adds to, or is every school supposed to make their own? I would suggest 
the former, since due to the huge number of sites that need to be added,
I don't think it could be done effectively by one school.

2) As I understand it, the way mirrored DNS is implemented is by domain name
rather than by a Web site (which would be something like domain name plus a
directory name for that site). However this could cause serious problems. 
For instance, suppose someone wanted to add the URL 
http://www.caltech.edu/hubble/pictures
which might have some great Hubble telescope pictures. 
This would require adding www.caltech.edu to the mirrored DNS database.
However, it's quite likely that there is also a site
http://www.caltech.edu/~random_undergrad/porno_pictures
which would be accessible because www.caltech.edu is in the list of
acceptable domain names.
I'm not sure how to get around this problem, but I thought I'd point out the 
problem anyway.

3) This is also a problem with allowing people to remove a Web site or URL.
If someone wants to remove a URL from the list, it will automatically remove 
access to any other URLs (which may still be on the list) in that domain.
Currently I am restricting removal of URLs and domains to the administrator.

4) I am wondering if we can automate the addition of some sites. For
example, all .gov and .mil sites are presumably OK. All domain names for
K-12 schools are presumably also OK, and if we could get such a list, it
would be simple to write a script to add all of these (i.e. a list of 
domain names from a file) to the mirrored DNS file.

5) The home page says that people who want to use it can get free beta 
software for Windows 95. What's this? Everything I'm doing is done via 
the Web - no software is needed. Is there something else involved that
I don't know about it.